Gettin' the hang of it

It is almost the end of my 2nd week in Beijing... and most of the adjustments are falling into place. I switched from "General Medicine" after about three days to "Ob/Gyn". Somehow I ended up on Gyn-Onc, the attending surprising the poor medical student on the service with a new task, "translate for the foreign exchange student." Shaking and barely able to say "okay" to her and "hello" to me, he obliged. Turns out his English is not bad at all, he just needs a bit of confidence.

Today I saw a pretty cool case, one that I hadn't seen before... a radical hysterectomy for stage 1B cervical cancer. Fantastic anatomical windows... could see all the nerves and vessels in the pelvic side walls.

On Tuesday morning, we rounded on a woman who was later going into surgery. She had recurrent ovarian cancer, multiple debulking surgeries in the past, and once again she was going into surgery. She was smiling, and seemed almost disturbingly enthusiastic to me. I was very confused with the presentation of her emotions. Later on I asked my medical student, and he told me that "some people are strong in mind, and I think she has accepted her cancer." Still, I was amazed that she was smiling... I would expect stoic or even agreeable, but not smiling with enthusiasm.

I have to say, being vegetarian for so many years, there has not been many things that I have tasted and did not like enough to not eat. This has happened to me multiple times in China. Not to say the food is not good... for example we have "noodle guy" in our cafeteria, who makes fresh noodles with his fingers, throws them in the boiling water, and serves them to you once they are perfectly cooked, about 3 minutes later. We also have "grill guy," who is really my man, he has all these skewers of yummy veggies, tofu, and some interesting things, such as little tofu sheet wrapped cilantro bundles, that he, well, grills for you, and throws sauces all over. The doughy-ness of the bread is something that we are just not used to... and also the ubiquitous nature of bean paste... when I look at it, I expect some sort of gooey fig newton type of filling, or perhaps even chocolate (I know, I'm asking for a lot), and instead I get this dry stuff... its just interesting, that's all.

Tonight we are going to this "Latin Night" @ a club... we'll see how it goes. I just need to move my hips around a bit.

This is the first time in my life that I am "blogging," so please... don't expect much. And if for some reason, you made it this far, then lets just say my skills are much a work in progress.